Working for the first time in a theatrical setting, Askew and Avis have pushed their trademark live-looping technique to new extremes by creating an experimental live-looped opera, with director, Emma Bernard, with a complex multi-layered vocal score.
Tongue –Tied is their first fully staged work, an opera about a couple whose son doesn’t speak to them.
Hood up, headphones on, and barricaded behind a bank of computers, the teenager uses looping technology to capture and echo his parents’ increasingly absurd attempts to deal with his silence.
As their voices are multiplied and distorted to fill the threatening void, the couple’s own longings and frustrations are exposed with funny and moving results.
